


never look back

by yuusaku



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Identity Issues, M/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-01 23:04:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11496624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuusaku/pseuds/yuusaku
Summary: IV doesn’t have brothers, either, so it’s not like it matters if it’s Thomas’ brother he’s kissing.





	never look back

**Author's Note:**

> this is dedicated to antis tbh

It starts with an argument. Something stupid and easily-forgotten involving Tron because Chris is still V in some of the ways that count, still sometimes rears up automatically at any slight to their father. Because IV is still IV in every way that counts, still a tool and not a real person, and no amount of disappointment from the others is going to change the fact that IV is all he is and all he ever will be. Because IV doesn’t have a father and pushing him to pretend he’s Tron’s son - rather than the tool that filled the space that that real son left behind, who tried and tried to be that real son and just couldn’t do it - only makes him more resentful, only makes him lash out.

So it starts with an argument. Him and V fight, and V looms over him because Chris has cut that out when he’s _Chris_ but still relies on it automatically when he’s _V_ , and IV slaps him, and IV kisses him, and V-or-Chris kisses back and IV can’t tell the difference. Can’t tell if it’s V kissing him or Chris kissing him or both. Can’t really bring himself to care.

(IV doesn’t have brothers, either, so it’s not like it matters if it’s Thomas’ brother he’s kissing)

* * *

They don’t talk about it for a while after that. Don’t talk about much of anything, really, because Chris starts avoiding him. Won’t meet his eyes for too long, won’t be in the same room as him for too long, and sure as hell won’t get up in his space like that again.

He’d like IV to believe the kiss was all V, IV’s pretty sure. Except that he’s too obviously self-conscious for that to be the case, and _anyway_ , IV knows damn well that V and Chris are more-or-less the same person. That they’re two sides of the same coin, unlike IV, and if V had kissed him that would still have been Chris kissing him, sort of.

So between the awkwardness and what their deal is, Chris was clearly the one kissing him, or at least part of it, and IV is _fine_ with that, and IV is also kind of importantly _not Chris’ brother_.

So he gets Chris alone himself, and he kisses him again, and Chris kisses back _again_ and this time it’s definitely all him, and IV ends up kind of automatically shoving him because goddammit, why can’t the guy make up his damn mind?

“I’m not Thomas,” he tells him, while Chris stands there and stares at him with this kind of confused-awkward-betrayed look on his face that IV doesn’t know what to make of.

“So you’ve said,” Chris says. “But…”

“But nothing. Make up your mind, okay? Either get over my face and do this, or forget the whole thing and act like normal.”

He leaves before Chris can respond.

* * *

Two days later, Chris slips into his room when he’s falling asleep, shutting the door behind him and standing there looking lost in the dim light that shines in from the city lights outside. He says IV’s name in a whisper and IV sits up in bed, gestures him forward.

He thinks it’s both of them, then. Because Chris wants this but he’s nervous, whereas V is a tool just like IV; V doesn’t really have a family either and so it doesn’t matter that IV has the same face as Chris’ brother. V-and-Chris are the same but they slip between each other for this, slip between each other to kiss IV and to touch him and to take him in hand and mouth and make him cry out and clutch their hair.

He doesn’t mind the slipping; they’re the same, really, and besides that he’s desperate enough for the affection to do anything for it, take it any way it comes.

He curls against Chris afterwards, runs cold and shakes against him and thinks _I want to be loved_ and doesn’t have the words to say it because he’s not a real person and it’d be wrong to ask, wrong to ask Chris to _love_ this thing that took up residence in his brother’s skin.

(this is enough, has to be enough, is more than he deserves when he stole Chris’ brother away)

* * *

It keeps happening after that. IV starts to flirt with Chris during the day when they’re alone, and Chris comes to his room night after night. Kisses him and touches him and fucks him and the more it happens the less he slips between Chris-and-V, the more it’s just Chris. The more Chris stops having to rely on a mask for it.

IV wonders sometimes whether Chris thinks the same will happen with him. Whether Chris thinks that IV is just a mask too, that with enough of this the mask will slip and Chris will have his brother back.

(would he keep fucking him, IV wonders? have his qualms about that faded now, after this much time spent fucking someone with his face?)

He keeps on wondering about it, now and then. Shakes in Chris’ arms after sex and hates how often and how much it breaks him apart and wonders if Chris likes that it does, if Chris thinks that’s a sign that there really is a mask that’s going to split away and leave Thomas behind.

(wonders if that’s true, sometimes, and how quickly he’d be tossed aside if Thomas came back, and how much that would feel like dying)

* * *

It’s months before IV finally manages to bring it up. Months before he manages to ask if Chris thinks Thomas is coming back, if that’s why he’s really doing this.

Chris only stares at him at first, and IV goes still and doesn’t breathe and his stomach ties itself in knots because he’s convinced that that means _yes_. Convinced that that’s all Chris has wanted this whole time, that telling him it’s not going to happen is going to make Chris toss him aside.

And then Chris is hugging him abruptly, holding him tight enough to hurt, and IV’s stomach flips over and he’s crying but Chris has him, Chris is holding onto him when he feels like he’s going to fall apart and murmuring reassuring nonsense in his ear that IV can’t process at all.

(can’t process except that he hears _I love you_ no less than five times, and it makes him cry all the harder but he never wants to stop hearing it)

* * *

“I think I want to be your brother,” IV tells Chris one night, laid up against Chris’ bare chest and playing with his hair. “But with the rest of it, too.”

He glances up, then, expecting Chris to have some kind of protest. And he _is_ making an odd awkward face, but after a few moments of silence he admits, “You have been.”

There’s the spike of anxiety, there. “I’m not Thomas, though.”

“I know,” Chris assures him quickly, reaching up to run his fingers through IV’s hair in the way that always makes IV melt a little. “But you’ve still been a brother to me. I just didn’t want to say it unless you were ready to hear it.”

IV relaxes, between that and the hand in his hair. Thinks about it for a while.

“Well,” he says eventually, “I guess it makes sense. I heard about what you said to Kaito during the WDC, and I _know_ you were fucking him.”

(he deserves getting shoved off the bed, probably)


End file.
